Gentle painting

There is a big difference between being decisive and being brutal with your painting. Today, I would like to dive into why sometimes, anxious people (like me) fall into the muddy colours and boring brushtrokes.

When I was in fine arts, a few years ago. My painting teacher told me: "You paint in auto-pilot" At that time, I didn't know what that even meant. Nowadays, I understand that it means to paint in such a way that you don't think what you are doing, whether it serves the painting and, most importantly(!), the meaning behind the artwork.

I am and have always been a gentle man, with soft touch and small voice. My painting speaks of complex spheres of the humans' emotions and interpersonal relationships, which are, per se, delicate topics. Yet my oil layers were thick, the edges sharp, and the colours primitive. Like a kid colouring a book.

I dived deeper into what was my mental process while painting... I realised I had very few thoughts. Many times, I found myself thinking: "What should I even do?", "What colour do I mix?"... only when it was time to take a step back and ponder about the direction it was taking the artwork, my inner voice woke up. "What is this? Where are the brushtrokes? The figures don't match with the background. Where is the drawing again?" Which led me to jump onto painting again, overwork a layer which was already wet and muddy into more muddy, less visible brustrokes, etc. It didn't click in my head that I was literally pushing paint onto the canvas as if Oil had an alergy to the primmed cotton.

I made a few tests of very, very, very light brustrokes over a dried layer only to realise.... "It's fine... the oil sticks to the layers, it doesn't look muddy, I have some cool brushtrokes, the edges are soft and... wait! Is great, in fact! It serves to hold the nature of the topic I am working on. "

I realised my insecurities led me to overwork layers in order to fix them instantly as if I spilt a whole paint bucket of neon green into my canvas by accident.

I also had to face the "silliness," "not so masculine," act to treat the brush as a delicate wand who gently place their magic on the canvas.

And you know what? Not only I am not dead, such as my inner voice wants to make me believe, but also makes FAR better results. Being decisive in your brushtrokes means to be conscious about every single step of the process. Not pushing paint onto the canvas with this: "I know what I am doing, Hush!" attitude.

Art is a luxury, sometimes even delicate thing. If your art style asks for hard and sped-up brushtrokes, hard edges, and bold colours. Go ahead, embrace them. But in my case, the only reason why I treated painting in such a way it was because of my generalised anxiety. Not coming from a place of strength, love, and empathy. Which is how my artworks should be made.

Love,

Daniel

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